Mark Hurdlestone | Page 8

But she
had formed a very incorrect estimate of Squire Hurdlestone's powers of
hating.
The arrival of Captain Wildegrave's widow in his immediate vicinity
greatly enraged the old Squire; but as he possessed no power of
denouncing women as traitors, he was obliged to content himself by
pouring forth, on every occasion, the most ill-natured invectives against
his poor unprotected neighbors.
He wondered at the impudence of the traitor Wildegrave's widow and
daughter daring to lift up their heads among a loyal community, where
her husband's conduct and his shameful death were but too well known.
Alas! he know not how the lonely heart will pine for the old familiar
haunts--how the sight of inanimate objects which have been loved in
childhood will freshen into living greenness its desolate wastes. The
sordid lover of gold, the eager aspirant for this world's trifling
distinctions, feels nothing, knows nothing, of this.
Elinor Wildegrave, the only child of these unhappy parents, had just
completed her seventeenth year, and might have formed a perfect
model of youthful innocence and beauty. Her personal endowments
were so remarkable, that they soon became the subject of conversation,
alike in the halls of the wealthy and in the humble abodes of the poor.
The village-gossips were not backward in mating the young heiress of
sorrow with the richest and noblest in the land. Elinor was not
unconscious of her personal attractions, but a natural delicacy of mind
made her shrink from general admiration. Her mother's scanty income
did not enable them to hire servants; and the work of the house

devolved upon Elinor, who was too dutiful a child to suffer her ailing
mother to assist her in these domestic labors. The lighter employments
of sewing and knitting, her mother shared; and they were glad to
increase their slender means by taking in plain work; which so
completely occupied the young girl's time, that she was rarely seen
abroad, excepting on Sundays, when she accompanied her mother to
the parish church; and then, the loveliness which attracted such
attention was always partially concealed by a large veil. Mark
Hurdlestone's valet happened to meet the young lady returning home
through the park without this envious appendage, and was so struck
with her beauty, that he gave his young master an eloquent description
of the angel he had seen.
"Believe me, sir, she is a mate for the King. If I were but a gentleman
of fortune like you, I should feel proud to lay it at her feet."
Mark heard him with indifference. He had never felt the least tender
emotion towards woman, whom he regarded as an inferior being, only
formed to administer to the wants, and contribute to the pleasures, of
man.
"Miss Wildegrave," he said, "might be a fine girl. But he could see no
beauty in a woman whose father had died upon the scaffold, and who
had no fortune. She and her mother were outcasts, who could no longer
be received into genteel society."
The valet, with more taste than his master, shrugged up his shoulders,
and answered with a significant smile: "Ah, sir! if we could but
exchange situations."
A few days after this conversation, Mark Hurdlestone met Elinor
Wildegrave by accident, and became deeply enamoured with the lovely
orphan.
In spite of his blunt speech and misanthropic manners, the young heir
of Oak Hall, at that period, was not wholly destitute of the art of
pleasing. He was sensible and well-read. His figure was commanding,
and his carriage good. His stern features were set off by the ruddy glow

of health; and the brilliancy of his lip and eye, the dazzling whiteness
of his small even teeth, and the rich masses of raven hair that curled in
profusion round his high forehead, atoned in some measure for the
disagreeable expression which at all times pervaded his remarkable
countenance.
"The young Squire is certainly very handsome," said Elinor Wildegrave
to her mother, the morning after their first meeting. "But there is
something about him which I cannot like. His face is as stern and as
cold as a marble statue's. I should think it would be impossible for that
man to shed a tear, or be capable of feeling the least tender emotion."
"My dear Elinor, you judge too much by externals. These taciturn
people are often possessed of the keenest sensibility."
"Ah! dearest mother, believe it not. 'From the abundance of the heart,
the mouth speaketh.' I love not these silent people. The heart that is
worn on the sleeve is better, and more to be trusted, than the heart that
is concealed in a marble shell."
The human countenance never lies. If read aright, it always presents the
real index of the mind. The first impression it makes upon a stranger is
always